Episode Details

There was a time - not that long ago - when a woman could be denied a job because she was physically capable of becoming pregnant. There was a time when a Supreme Court justice could declare, “I will never hire a woman clerk,” and make it stick.

There was a time when blatant and grotesque harassment in the workplace, including unwanted touching, kissing and worse, was expected to be accepted by women as a compliment. They would have no legal recourse. The term sexual harassment had not even been coined.

Bob Herbert discusses the many long, hard fought cases against these outrages with guest Gillian Thomas, a senior staff attorney with the Women’s Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, and author of the new book, “Because of Sex: One Law, Ten Cases, and Fifty Years That Changed American Women’s Lives at Work.”

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